Bonus Exam

Light painted the sides of their bodies and faces as they stared at each other. Releasing their power gave the signs that they were finally looking to put an end to their battle. If the clashing powers in the sky were any sign to judge by it appeared to still be an even match. Hokuren didn’t exercise dominance over Yumi like it might have seemed likely. Yet they only continued to wreck the environment with their power mounting higher.

Yumi had never felt anything like it before. The whole pressure of their powers couldn’t compare to anything that she had experienced. ‘I have no idea what’s going to happen at this stage now. I have no idea the level of destructive power we’re wielding now… If this had been the real world…’ It relieved her a bit that this was only happening in a virtual world that she could ignore the consequence of this sort of damage. This sort of thing would be impossible if they were in their home. The scale that they fought Takako at already felt disastrously dangerous to approach. It would be no wonder why the rest of the world feared them if they saw her power now.

Standing above all others, two warriors could only see each other now. Intensity of their pressure reached a point that any slip could mean the end of the other. They had to keep a tightly controlled balance over their strength. It wildly bouncing through the atmosphere dropped to just being merely background noise, static in their ears. All senses focused tightly on their opponent for the next move.

The next attack would come soon.

Chapter 463 – Bonus Exam

Yumi acted first. She disappeared smoothly in an instance. However, just the mere pressing of her foot to start smashed a crater behind her throwing off chunks of earth into the air like meteors that came raining back down more than a hundred kilometers away.

Caught by Hokuren, Yumi collided with a titanic force against him. While he stopped her immediately, the force that he didn’t block escaped behind him. A lethal slash from her sword cleaved deep into the heart of the land.

He smiled up at Yumi with her held in mid-air from their two blades clashing. “You’re a truly impressive woman!” A counter with a slash came through that Yumi spun around in the air and blocked. The demon swung again with her deflecting it away to the side making half the mountain disappear. Twisting the white blade of light and slashing out, she wiped out the whole forest behind the demon.

A rapid series of attacks came with them fighting to try to break through the guard. Nothing managed to get through to them. However, massive pillars of smoke rose up surrounding them as the whole area masked out from their fight.

“I’m feeling quite glad now,” grinned Yumi with excitement, “I haven’t ever felt like this before!”

“Let’s keep going then!” Hokuren lifted into the air with Yumi following him. She gave chase to him as they loosely blocked and parried strikes. Multiple blades of light appeared at her back launching at him. He parried each of them away and charged back toward meeting her half way in her attack.

The end of their brief exchange completely cleared away all of the dust and clouds that veiled their field. Beneath them a massive crater appeared where there used to be a mountain and beautiful rolling hills of wild grass and flowers. Only a steaming pit of destruction remained from their battle. In the air, their power reduced the damage inflicted upon the ground, but their presence was enough to still quake the earth.

With the stepping up of Yumi in the fight, Hokuren responded in kind to her pressure. He lifted his hand up in the air, which left Yumi a little confused as she didn’t notice any difference. Until she looked to the sky, she didn’t realize what her mistake was. He hadn’t summoned a new sword to fight with like before.

Rather, a massive chunk of metal came out. It moved far faster than Yumi expected. ‘He just made a slab of metal?’ She fired her blades at the metal to divert the course, but found that her blades didn’t have enough force behind it to do it. It continued at her forcing her dodge out of the way as it crashed into the earth below her.

However, when Yumi looked at the metal closer she realized that it wasn’t what it originally appeared to be. At a better glance, it was a sword as well. “A sword?! What?” There were fine details carved throughout the length of the surface that appeared to be depicting several different scenes of a battle, ones that she had no knowledge to reference. Despite the size being that of a skyscraper, it seemed to be decorative rather than practical. At that size nothing was practical to wield.

Though it seemed like a useless weapon to fight with, it moved again. And it moved in a way that made it deceptive to its size. The Demon Lord moved it with almost effortless ease through the air. It swung around with the speed of anything that Yumi had faced before, but with the density and mass unlike anything.

An attempt to block the sword sent her flying through the air nearly to the Sea of Japan. Before she could recover, the Demon Lord was upon her slamming her into the sea. A massive pillar of water shot up into the air along with a tidal wave that crashed into the mainland. The sword split the sea in half with it stopping on Yumi.

Bloodied and bruised, she held the blade back half planted into the sea bed along with a deep crater. Yumi pushed back on the blade running along the edge until it lifted out of the water. She slid down the length towards Hokuren while discharging her gravity orbs to hold down the blade. The density was such that even her gravity struggled to crush it.

Before she could reach the demon another blade of equal size came in and completely split it in two. Shards of the blade sprayed up at her. The pieces were dense and heavy enough that at the speeds they flew they tore through skin on her arms as she tried to defend against it.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Two more blades appeared out of the skies coming after her. Yumi dodged around them keeping up with the speed, but their size made it harder for her. They grazed past her cheeks in her evasion. ‘My normal swords aren’t going to be enough…’ While she dodged, Yumi began to gather her energy together into a single blade. The brightness of the light grew with intensity. ‘Press it, fold it, crush it…’

Yumi focused on her sword growing its power as she stayed ahead of Hokuren. However, he managed to pause her in surprise as a large cube suddenly appeared from nowhere. It had nothing special about it. Completely plain and ordinary, other than the fact that it didn’t belong where they were in the fight. Yet it was summoned by him like the swords. He flung it at her with twice the speed of the swords. It clipped her shoulder, throwing off her concentration and crashing her into the earth.

“What the hell was that?!” Yumi stared up at the demon to see that he summoned more things for their battle. None of them were weapons in the traditional sense, the same as the cube. It appeared that he could summon up anything that he wanted. ‘Is his power bringing objects into reality or something?’ She could only guess at what it was he was doing. The reality of it was that it mattered the least for her in the fight. He only kept pushing her closer and closer to her limits forcing her to stand back up.

She resumed on her sword gathering the strength within it forced to keep dodging more unusual things. Everything moved so quickly and her attention was less on the specifics and more on what was happening in the macro level of their fight that she couldn’t recognize any of the things that he pulled in against her, though she was fairly certain that she saw a house at some point.

‘Put everything into it. A blade that cut through anything!’ A blindingly intense light came from her blade. She charged straight for Hokuren with her cutting through any of the projectiles sent at her. Objects too large for her she used her gravity orbs to pull away from their course giving her an open path.

Launching one of the skyscraper sized blades at Yumi, she gambled on her blade being strong enough. She threw out her blade coming up from her feet to catch the end of Hokuren’s sword. For a moment, it came to a stop. Sparks of light and blasts of power from her blade erupted from the collision. Yumi felt herself being pushed back from the weight. It appeared like her sword couldn’t cut it, but she kept going.

Screaming deeply, she put all of her strength behind her sword fighting back. At any point she could have dodged and found a different way around to the demon, but it became about proving a point to him. Yumi wanted to defeat the sword that he threw at her. Crushing his power and sending a message to him. She wasn’t going to lose to him.

Her sword chipped into the metal making progress. With the damage started, everything continued to keep moving like an unstoppable force. Her sword cut into the metal bringing her to stand atop of the flat of the blade. Yumi ran across the surface pushing her speed until she disappeared to the end of the hiltless sword.

A line of light covered the length of the sword Hokuren created as it split in half. Yumi grabbed the end of one piece that she cut, feeling the weight of it suddenly. Deep groans spilled out of her mouth as she fought with the sheer mass. Using gravity orbs to aid her, she started to move it slowly at first, but then faster.

It flung back at the demon that she followed. He dodged with ease as she expected, it didn’t seem to surprise him, though it did leave him with an impressed smirk at her achievement. They clashed blades once more. In a mere second more than two hundred swings clashed creating multiple disruptive waves of pressure that forced out even the breathable air from around them.

Yumi noticed the difficulty breathing, slowing down her attacks and pulled back. The temporary vacuum explosively refilled creating a new shockwave of force that pushed on the warriors. She glanced down at her blinding blade with it even hurting her eyes a little. ‘Even with this I can’t cut through to him…he’s still holding back…’

The sword in Hokuren’s hand disappeared. He crossed his arms very pleased with the fight that he got from Yumi. “You’ve been a wonderful fight that I haven’t experienced since I was in my homeland.”

“You talk like this is ending.”

“Unfortunately, you do not seem to be the one I sought. I can feel you hitting your limit.”

“I can still keep going!” Yumi pushed her strength further as a show of proof. She didn’t want the fight to end. It was only just getting to the best part. Everything was feeling right and she enjoyed every moment of it. She wanted it to keep going. He couldn’t end it now on her.

She swung her blade at Hokuren to force their fight to continue, but he caught it with two fingers and his thumb. Shock painted sharply over Yumi’s face as his pressure of demon aura suddenly spiked over hers dramatically. ‘He still had this deep of reserves?!’ With little effort he shattered her blade of light.

A hit that she couldn’t even see slammed her in the stomach. Blood sprayed up out of her mouth as she felt the damage nearly knock the light out of her eyes. She slammed into the earth making a crater half the size of the one the two made when they wiped out everything around the mountain. Her body suddenly felt impossible to move. “No! I…only…”

“You were a truly special warrior like none that I have ever faced in this land. The first one to make me put in such effort.”

“Then you don’t mind me taking that position over,” a new voice said from out of the side of their battle intruding on the conclusion of their battle.

Yumi couldn’t see who it was from within the crater and struggled against her body to move, wanting to know who it was. ‘That voice sounds familiar…’

“Who are you?” Hokuren asked.

Dropping down the heads of two of the other Demon Lords, the mysterious figure displayed their proof to challenge a fight. It was Lord Guri and Lord Kokonemu. “No one that you need to know, demon.”